


It is going to be alright

by therune



Series: Tales of Kingsman [1]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 17:59:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3864376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therune/pseuds/therune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written for the kinkmeme, but I derailed that prompt spectacularly. </p><p>Chester and Harry have always had a special relationship. <br/>The boy lives.<br/>The agent lives. <br/>The boy lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It is going to be alright

The boy has to live.  
Everything will be fine if the boy lives. 

Mordred barely feels the flames licking at his back, barely hears the deafening cries and cracks, the roaring fire. The mission had gone bad so fast. Objectively, he knows that it is not his fault. They had gotten the intelligence too late, and instead of the four men sent to kill the ambassador's family, there had been nine. Mordred has tried and they evaded the bomb, the car ambush, the second car ambush, but the second team, the five men who were not supposed to be there, they shot the driver, shot the bodyguard, kept on shooting at the car, which had screeched out of control. Mordred is precise, quick and has dispatched of six men when the seventh produces a grenade launcher. He has no time.   
Mordred rips the door open while he can already hear the gunfire. The ambassador is dead already, half his head missing. His wife recognizes that Mordred is here to help and shoves her child at him. Mordred understands and flings himself back, just away from the car. He doesn't hear what she shouts, the last words she will speak to her child. Her sight burns itself into his eyes, eyes full of tears and love, her stomach a mess of red and black. She was dead already.   
But the boy is alive. Mordred may have failed, but he can keep the boy alive. Everything will be fine if the boy lives.   
They have escaped the exploding car. The boy's arms grip him tightly around his neck, but he barely feels it. Three men must die, and then it will be over.   
Running as fast as his legs can carry them, he crosses the street and ducks into a corner. He can already see his route - duck and weave until he gets to the lorry, flash-grenade to the man with the grenade launcher, knife to the throat of the eighth man, climb up, stun the ninth man and incapacitate him, then he can use his last bullet on the seventh. His hands find the arms of the boy and he disentangles him from his neck.  
"Stay, I will protect you," Mordred says. He looks at the boy - frightened, crying, so small - and is already on top of the lorry before his brain has finished analyzing the child. Possibly three to four years old, suit, tie, white shirt, short pants that leaves his knees uncovered, one of them adorned by a bandaid, soot on his jacket and face, tears cutting twin lines through the dirt. Impossibly huge brown eyes. By the time he manages to ask himself if the boy understood him at all, the three men are dead. But so is the Hungarian ambassador and his family.   
The first thing Mordred hears is his harsh breathing. Then a small crackle from his communicator which gave out even before he arrived on scene. He doesn't know that his glasses still work, that they have seen what he has seen. The third thing he hears is the boy crying, then the sirens of police and ambulance.   
Before he has realized it, he is crouching next to the boy, sinks to his knees. He isn't quite sure for whose comfort the embrace is, "I have got you," he whispers into red hair, "I will keep you safe."  
The boy lives. 

Kingsman sets the boy up with a new identity and he spends the next few weeks in the hospital. His name had been Alexander. It is now Harold and will be Harold Hector de Herte. The de Hertes have been trying to conceive for years. The boy will be safe, cared for, he will be loved. Merlin tells him when she catches him sitting in the boy's room. She altered the hospital records in order to create Harold. He was supposed to rest, recover back at the headquarters. Still, he sits next to the boy, watch his little chest rise and fall. He lives. It will be okay. 

Years pass, there are many more missions, some failures, some catastrophic. Merlin helps him check on the boy over the years. She claims she is getting soft in her old age, but she understands. She places a warm hand on his shoulder when she shows him a picture of the boy in boarding school, in his school uniform. His hair is turning darker, and he is growing like a weed. Still Mordred sees the little boy he saved, the one thing that made it alright. 

Lancelot dies. Mordred mourns. Lancelot is made anew.   
Kay retires after he loses a leg and three fingers.   
Merlin has a stroke during a mission, yelling into his ear, her last words are "everything will be alright".   
Gawain is blown up.   
Hector has 12 bullets in his body, yet keeps on firing. He saves a political conference, over 300 people. The next 12 bullets do him in.   
Percival crashes over the Atlantic. They don't find his body.   
Tristan burns to death.   
Iwein falls from the Empire State Building.  
Bors throws himself on a grenade.   
Mordred feels ancient as the others around him leave one by one. New faces replace them, but it's not the same. Pellinore, Erec, Gareth, Agravaine, Bedivere, Gingalain, Leodegrance, Lohengrin - all pass and it seems like he is the only one left. It's 1982 when Galahad succumbs to cancer. 

Mordred presents his candidate and when he sees the others, it is like a punch to the stomach. It's his boy, presented by Lancelot. Of course he passes with flying colors.   
Galahad catches Mordred alone, when he is looking at a black suit and in reality at nothing. He clears his throat.  
"Is something the matter, Galahad?"  
"It is you, is it not?"  
"You will have to be more precise, I am afraid."  
Galahad is in his personal space, reaching for Mordred, until his fingertips brush the frame of his glasses. He lifts them gently and Mordred is too surprised to stop him. Galahad's reserve and stature crumbles. A smile spreads over his face, warm and genuine.   
"I do not even know if you remember me. But you saved my life."  
"That was ages ago, Galahad, I-"  
"I could never forget your face. You pulled me from the fire." Something in Galahad's brown eyes shifts. He takes a bold step forwards and throws his arms around Mordred, clinging to his neck. Instantly, Mordred is back where he was twenty years ago, breathing smoke, hearing fire and tiny sobs.   
"Thank you," Galahad whispers in his ear, "without you, I ... I dread to imagine what would have been."  
The boy lives. Everything will be alright. 

Eventually Arthur passes. Possibly the first Kingsman to die peacefully in his sleep.   
Mordred is nominated and accepts among raised glasses, sharp suits and the boy's warm smile.   
Galahad is a sight to behold. Beautiful, elegant, ruthless. The Galahad of legend is the purest knight, destined to find the Holy Grail, to save them.   
Arthur knows that he has saved him. 

The knights keep on saving the world and they keep on dying. Once a month, he has dinner with Galahad. Sitting in his office, drinking tea (and often someting stronger) and talking about the world. Arthur knows that he lets Galahad get away with things he would not allow other knights to do. Galahad is special. Galahad is his boy. 

 

Arthur talks to Valentine, and he knows that the world is going to change. He does not feel too bad about the kingsman. They will keep dying , as always. But...  
He catches himself before he can say it, and knows that Valentine didn't catch him "the agent lives."  
Valentine informs him that that would be a stupid idea, but Arthur insists. The world can burn. But everything will be alright, if his boy lives. 

And live, he does.


End file.
